Western Short StoryA Twin's RevengeTom Sheehan

Western Short Story

In 1857 the wagon
train came west to Wyoming, to Torson Valley, so fertile and
rich-looking that Dabney Brunton bought a nice big piece of it along
a stream that carried clear mountain water. His wife Lila had twin
boys, 6 years of age, Roy and Rob. En route, without any warning, the
wagon train was assaulted by a large group of horsemen. None of them
were Indians from the Plains tribes. None of them were half breeds or
renegades, a mix of red and white, but all of them were white men as
cruel as false dawn is on some bad days.

As a precaution at
the start of the journey, Brunton had slung a couple of thick boards
spanning the underside of his wagon where his sons could hide if the
wagon train was attacked. It had worked for Roy Brunton, but Rob
never reached that haven when the big attack came. He was killed by a
single bullet, fired by a man with a bulbous nose and narrow eyes.
The boy was buried beside the trail after the attackers were driven
off.

Dabney Brunton made
a cross for the grave out of the board that could have saved Rob’s
life if he had reached that small hideaway under the wagon bed. Lila
Brunton said the final words for her son Rob while holding Roy’s
hand. She did not let go of his hand all that day, though the boy
kept looking back toward the grave for much of time. For a month of
nights he had fiery, evil dreams of “Pigface,” a name he assigned
to his brother’s killer. That name too was a personal secret.

Roy had seen the
face of the man who killed his brother, hesitated on telling his
parents, and finally did not tell them. It was not long after, in
deep thought in the half-built cabin at the end of the rich Wyoming
valley, when he realized his dreams were keeping visible the face of
the dread killer; for a purpose.

The image stayed
with him for years, clear as a reflecting image on the face of a
still pond. And the details of that man never faded; he brought them
back every day of his life thereafter: the bulbous nose asserting a
porcine look, the eyes so narrowly spaced they might be attached by
that ugly nose itself, a brow high as it was broad, and a pair of
weak-looking, sloping shoulders that hung so low they seemed to be
without much support.

In the short years
following, Lila Brunton gave birth to two more children in that
Wyoming Valley, but she too looked backward each day toward that
hallowed spot where her son Rob was buried beside the trail. Though
Roy, growing solid and tall each day, was a fine son, and younger
children Amanda and Roger took much of her time, the void in her life
was constantly with her until the day she discussed the fateful
attack with Roy who had come into his 17th year as a
steady hand for his father. The ranch, without surprise, grew apace
with him.

The discussion,
which she initiated, centered on the lack of attention that Roy
exhibited for his younger siblings. “Roy,” she said outright, “I
know you work like a slave for your father and me, but Amanda and
Roger love you so much, even though you do not seem to love them back
half as much. The seeming distance disturbs me greatly. But I do not
want to discuss it with your father, who has his own way with things.
You know how driven he is to increase this ranch in every aspect, but
I feel much of that energy neutralizes the loss of Rob. Your father
loved him the way he loves you.”

Roy, more sensitive
than his mother thought, had seen much of it coming the way it did.
“Mom, I have looked back every day since Rob died, every single day
of my life, just as you do. He’s my twin brother. We were paired
from the beginning. None of that goes away from me and I know it has
not gone away from you. I had dreams for so long I thought I had gone
to Hell for bearing so much hatred and sorrow at the same time.”

“Oh, Roy, you
never said a word, though we knew things bothered you all get out. I
kept from saying anything about Rob because I hoped it would slip
back into the past for you and not haunt you the way it’s haunted
me.”

Roy saw the blue
pain sitting in his mother’s eyes. Memory told him her eyes had
been that way for a long time; that was as long as he had thought
about Pigface. It made him wonder about his father, how that man had
hidden the pain, though he had been busy, it seemed, forever. From
the time they bought the land, dropped the first tree, set up the
first stone of the hear th, put down the first seed, brought in the
first bull, twisting the tail all the way to the first corral. Work,
he realized, obviously had replaced sorrow, though it could never
erase it.

Roy figured it was
time to tell his mother what it was like with him, thinking it might
alleviate some of her sorrow. “Mom, I never told you or Pa that I
saw the man who killed Rob. I have seen his face every day of my life
and so many nights in dreams I couldn’t count them. But if I ever
see him, I will know him in a second, no matter what he looks like
now, how he has aged, what time has done to him. Rob will be avenged,
that is my life’s work coming. I will become a sheriff, or a
deputy, and that man’s death will be legal. That is a promise I
make to you right now, as your son, as Rob’s twin brother … that
Pigface will pay for killing my brother.”

Lila Brunton
thought there was so much hard steel and fire in her son’s eyes
that in one sparse moment she let go the anguish and pain carried
nearly visible on her person for ten solid years. Those feelings fled
like balloons let loose to the sky, for her son had also carried the
pain for her. Someone truly shared with her. She did not blame her
husband, who had been a hard worker from pre-dawn until late-bed for
those ten years.

On days following,
a new spirit working its will in her body and her mind, she began to
see things about the ranch, and her husband, a bit differently, but
also continued to watch Roy with a keener eye. The break-out, she
realized, would come sometime, after certain demands made themselves
known in the maturing young son she loved twice as much since his
revelations. It was a love that she thought was not possible, so much
pain had preceded it.

“Lila,” her
husband said early one evening, “you’re like the girl I first
met. I see the change and I’ll have you know none of this has been
lost on me. No particular surprises from me now, but I realize as
much as you that Roy is working his way to a special place in his
life. He will do as he wills, I am sure of that. He has grown into a
remarkable young man that this ranch needed every step of the way, no
matter how hard I worked on it. He has been a godsend, but his
mission in this life has yet to be completed. We must pray for him
every night and every dawn as his day starts. Rob, I am sure, watches
with us. We’ll let Amanda and Roger grow into all of it. We’ll
let them have their time. Roy was robbed of his early, just as Rob
was.”

As her pain and
anguish had fled into the skies earlier, she now rushed into her
husband’s arms, the circle in their lives almost gone the full
cycle.

Meanwhile, while
the transformation proceeded in the family, Roy Brunton did his civic
duties as well as ranch duties. He went on at least a dozen posse
runs after bandits, robbers, killers in the great Wyoming valley
where the family had made a new and successful life. Becoming a sure
tracker, a reader of men on the run and their habits that let slide
hints and clues of their passages, he was hailed as a new force in
criminal tracking, treatment and pay-back.

“Hey, Roy,” the
sheriff once said while they were on posse, “How in heck did you
now that scoundrel went up there in them rocks where we can’t go in
any hurry and where no one can last very long, with no water up in
there?”

“That one’s
easy, Sheriff,” Roy explained. “Before he robbed the bank he’d
been in the general store and bought, mind you, bought, four
canteens. He was not going far, not on that old mount Timmons from
the livery said he rented; he was going long, meaning for a long time
in the rocks and caves. When I saw where he broke off those burrs, I
just figured he wanted to set off that old critter, with burrs under
his saddle, on a long run for us to chase foolish like and had
another mount tethered off in some place near those rocks, like maybe
in the cave where we found it. The man was thinking but never thought
one of us would cotton to his tricks.”

“I tell you, son,
no man ever on a posse with me could figure that one out. That makes
you special in my mind. You should be sheriff some day.”

“I aim to be,
Sheriff,” Roy Brunton replied, and all who heard him say it
believed it.

The posse was
skirting a huge bend in the river east of Torson Valley, with the day
gathering down to evening. They had not seen a sign of their prey
this side of the river and the sheriff offered that they ought to
head back or hole up in the nearest town and start out the next day
back at the last sign.

“Who’s for
heading back and who’s for wetting his throat and holing up in
Scattercross?” He looked first at Roy Brunton, sitting his horse
right beside him.

“I’m heading
into Scattercross,” Roy said,” no matter who says what.”

“You going
searching again, Roy?” the sheriff said, fully aware that Roy
Brunton never missed a chance to check out a new town or a town he
had not been in for a while.

The nine-man posse
broke off in pairs that wandered into town, wetting their whistle,
looking for an old friend, seeking lodgings such as above the livery
or with a friend or relative. The sheriff and his deputy made for
the sheriff’s office. Roy Brunton, as always, dallied around town,
looking in windows, visiting the general store, window shopping in a
few glass-fronts, and checking out the barber shop.

Late in the
evening, when most traffic came to one of the two saloons, he dropped
into the first saloon, looked around, and left.

The second saloon,
The Great Divider, was a different story.

He gasped, though
inaudibly, as he entered The Great Divider, slipping in through the
swinging doors as soft as a shadow. In the large mirror gracing much
of the wall background behind the bar, he saw in absolutely clear
reflection, as in many of his dreams, the dreaded, deadly, haunting
visage of Pigface. The murderer of his twin brother was dealing the
cards in a game with four other players at a poker table. The dealer
did not look up, but kept dealing the cards. He did not see Roy
Brunton walking slowly towards him and his tablemates.

But off in one
corner sat the posse sheriff, his eyes on Roy Brunton as he
approached the poker table where Pigface sat. The sheriff, scowling,
indecision showing on his face, searched his mind quickly for the
details that lingered about the man.

Criminals, those
who evade jail-time for much of their active lives, must depend for
survival, and their continued freedom, on certain abilities or senses
that include perception, intuition, and suspicion. Without using
perception, not having seen Brunton at this point, and not employing
suspicion, he was suddenly brought aware of his intuition trying to
shake loose of the poker game. Something new hovered about him.
Because of the intrusion of intuition, he sat straight up in his
seat, but had not moved otherwise.

Pigface’s real
name was Moke Oliver, and the strangest thing with that brutal
murderer was his evasion of any jail time in his long criminal
history. Some might call it luck, but lawmen know that odds always
swing around eventually. That information was also shared by jailers
and prison wardens, like the top dog in Yuma Territorial Prison and
other such places where reality always touches down like a bird from
flight. Wardens are those men being the last custodians of luck, all
of it finally gone sour for the bad guys of the west. Somewhere, in
the penal system, a warden was waiting for Moke Oliver … unless an
avenging twin got in the way.

As Moke Oliver sat
there at the poker table with murderous friends and saddle pards, any
on-looker would have seen the give-away character-molding signs that
lingered on his person: he was as ugly as a sty, mean as a
carrion-seeker, self-centered as a judge in a kangaroo court, and as
hungry as a newborn. The signs also said distance should be
maintained, meaning “stay away from Moke Oliver.”

But Roy Brunton was
approaching him, his hands positioned at his sides, poised. The
sheriff felt fate in the air.

Upright in his
seat, Oliver was also acutely aware that luck may have shifted its
place of operations.

More than seeing
the shadow descending on his person, he felt the weight of an old
crime descending with it. The particular crime did not reveal itself,
but it was present in some manner, in some form.

The full shadow of
Roy Brunton descended over the back of Moke Oliver, fell upon the
poker table, on the money mounding in the pot. And young Brunton,
rage beginning to assemble itself in huge cumbersome doses, could
have shot Oliver right then and there. But something held him back.
Perhaps it was his twin brother casting an alarm, or his mother’s
words about the horrors of revenge coming into place for the last
time.

His gun was in his
hand.

Oliver looked into
the large mirror behind the bar and saw Brunton with the drawn gun.
“You don’t look like a bushwhacker kid and I know I never saw you
before, so what’s this all about?”

“It’s about
murder, mister, a murder I saw you commit. You killed a six-year old
boy more than 15 years ago and I’ve been looking for you all that
time.”

“You’re crazy,
kid. I never kilt no six-year old boy in my whole life.” But he
felt the weight of some shadow still pushing down on him. “Where
was this supposed to be, this killing?”

Brunton waved his
gun again, saw the sheriff standing now across the room along with
the Scattercross sheriff, and said, “15 years ago, in the Walters
Pass. You shot a six-year old boy as he was trying to hide under a
wagon.”

“You’re still
crazy, kid. I never saw you before in my life, and 15 years ago, how
the hell old was you then anyway?”

“I was six,
Pigface. And I was under the wagon and his name was Rob and he was my
twin brother. I saw you do it. I saw you shoot him like he was a
sheriff chasing you or some grown-up who had already lived a lot.”

“What did you
call me, kid?” Moke Oliver said, as if being called that name was
worse than being called the murderer of a six-year old boy.

“I called you
Pigface ‘cause that’s all I could ever remember about you. And
you can ask any man in this room, including the sheriffs over there
what they’d remember about you if they only saw you once.”

There was only a
slight movement of the players at the table. The Scattercross sheriff
said, “Don’t do it, boys. None of you. Firsts man tries to help
this killer of a six-year old kid gets hung along with him.”

Four pairs of
revolvers, in the hands of the law, were trained on the table.

Moke Oliver,
looking at his pards, felt the weight of the long shadow still laying
its hugeness on him, and Roy Brunton, like his mother, felt something
let itself loose in the night.

He’d have to tell
his ma and pa how it all felt. He no longer had any visions of being
a sheriff, and saw himself content as a rancher, like his father,
which is why they had all come west in the beginning.